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Page 62
"Who?"
"Stephen Langton, an Englishman. He is now cardinal priest of Saint Chrysogonus in Rome. You do not know him, but my lands are in the north and I met him twice, oh, many years ago when he was a prebendary in York. It was just after I came out of Wales. I was, perhaps, eighteen or nineteen years old. I have never forgotten him. No one who has ever met him has ever forgotten him. He will serve our purpose if any man alive can. He is the stuff of which martyrs are made."
Alinor fastened the bandage and reached out absently to hand Ian his shirt. He smiled as he began to struggle into it. She was looking at him with a frown on her brow but obviously not seeing him at all. Her thoughts were all for the political matter under discussion. Again Ian was aware of pleasure oddly mixed with pain. Obviously, he was no longer an honored guest, one who must be waited upon hand and foot. Husbands might do for themselves when wives were otherwise occupied. The abandonment of formal courtesy was reassuring, but Ian was not a husband of long standing. He was a young lover. He wanted his lady's eyes to dwell upon him with desire.
The shirt was Ian's own and thus too tight over the bulky bandage. Simon's chausses had fitted well because both men were long of leg and narrow of hip, but Simon had been bulkier of shoulder and chest than Ian. In a moment Alinor's attention was recalled by his contortions. She "tchk'd" with irritation, snatched the shirt off over his head again, and went to fetch another.
"I can see that it will help to fix John's attention on a contest with the church, although that is a chancy thing and may bring grief in its train; but it is not enough," Alinor said as she maneuvered the larger shirt over Ian's body.
Now started, she continued to dress him with automatic efficiency, dropping to her knees to pull the chausses over his feet and up over his legs. Ian's hand

 
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